Quotes from Storm Constantine

You live only in the imagination of the one who created you, and have no past other than that. Your life is bright, fluttering dream, a butterfly against the sky, a spiralling petal falling down from a high branch, a falling snowflake approaching a hot coal. No more than this. You have never been alive.

Varian had become an obsession with Finnigin, his image expanded into some kind of demiurge.

Dressed as man, and with all the poise of someone at least six years older, he had learned quickly from his Magravandian classmates.

With relief, I'd waved goodbye to my guardian-pursuers on the coast of Lansaal and headed north, visualising them as diminishing specks on the shore, impotently ranting at my defection. See, it is a joke. I am not afraid of them.

In the hieroglyphic script, the power of the words were matched by the power of the symbols themselves. The symbols were regarded as being so powerful, precautions had to be taken to prevent them from taking on a life of their own.

He was like a spirit cut free from reality. He was adrift, helpless, insubstantial.

He felt that he was donning his other-life attire, he was making some kind of obvious invitation, which Owen would scorn.

Impulsively, I reached out to touch him him, even though I knew such action would evaporate his fragile corporeality. My hand touched silky hair, felt the hardness of skull beneath. I pulled away, gasping, drawing up my knees. This was too real.

Time stood still, ignored the event.

Perhaps what he'd been seeking was simply his own self, and he'd been guilty of imposing omens on words and places.

Her words cast a stone into the pool of my soul; the ripples they caused were fierce and shallow, but the knowledge itself sank deep into my spirit and lodged there in the dark, deep currents; immutable.

Anvil would not come to watch. He's always wary of fanatics. He says that fanatical belief causes intelligence to die, but it can also be said that fanatical belief is an intelligence of death. What a strange night!

He'd never eaten out with Owen before, and their clothes invoked curious glances from the staff of the restaurant.

Within a very short space of time, I had to lean against the wall for support, the ground beneath my feet swaying as if I was on a boat. In fact, it was more comforting to imagine that I was.

Did no-one ever tell you not to trust a fallen angel?" Shemyaza said. "They tell lies.

It was a sacrifice. At that moment, she realized that Valraven too was a sacrifice. Not one of blood, but of something else, perhaps spirit. He had been sacrificed to Madragore.

His kin are proud of themselves and because none of them are truly ugly, Wraethru are never ashamed to admit they are beautiful. Only in a world where ugliness prevails is it a shame to be vain, a cruelty to appreciate loveliness in oneself.

A great burden had been lifted from my soul. I had divested its weight onto the child Rayojini, and I knew she would not feel it there. It could not harm her. Not yet. Not for a long time.

Letiel put her hand on his arm, and smiled at him. He could feel her empathy. She too had been let down by men. How odd to find this affinity. He hadn't thought of that.

There is something out there for me, he thought, and then he chided himself for the melodrama of the idea. There is something out there for everyone, everywhere, if they have the courage to look. He knew he was no different from anyone else. Perhaps he had simply become the victim of calenture, and had not realised it. He did not feel fevered and yet his compulsion was undeniably mazy.

Melandra shivered, remembering all the hours she had spent alone as a young girl, and the tall, sinister shadows that might have waited for her in the tangled corners of the garden playgrounds.

I fairly floated in a daze, lines falling from my lips without conscious thought.

An unwritten law forbids us to speak of it, and even the thought conjures dark names, dark times.

Magic is optimism and hope, isn't it? The desire for more than what is mundane to appear.